---
title: Cloud Serverless Overview
subtitle: Learn about Serverless cloud routing use cases and limitations
description: Learn about Apollo GraphOS Serverless cloud routers, including intended use cases, limitations, and router statuses.
---

<CloudPlanPause />

GraphOS Serverless cloud routers run on shared infrastructure that Apollo manages. Serverless is for demos, proof-of-concepts, and small production apps that don't need more than ten requests per second (RPS) or more than 150 concurrent subscriptions.

## Serverless compute limitations

The following circumstances can exhaust Serverless capacity:

- Complex schemas can exceed available machine memory for Serverless routers. For example, Serverless routers don't support schemas with over 1,000 input types.
- Too many requests at once can overload your Serverless cloud router. It will return 429 errors to your clients.

Because of these limitations, certain workloads might require you to upgrade to Dedicated.

## Automatic deletion of unused routers

When a Serverless cloud router goes 30 days without a request, Apollo deletes the router.
To avoid deletion, run a GraphQL operation on the router before the 30-day limit.

Learn more about Serverless router statuses leading up to deletion in the next section.

## Serverless router status

All cloud routers can have **Initializing**, **Running**, and **Error** [statuses](../#cloud-router-status). Serverless cloud routers have these additional statuses:

| Status                         | Description                                                                                                                                       |
| ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Running, will sleep soon**   | Your cloud router hasn't received requests for six days and is scheduled to go to sleep soon.                                                     |
| **Sleeping**                   | Your cloud router hasn't received requests for seven days and is now sleeping. [Learn more.](#sleeping)                                           |
| **Waking**                     | Your cloud router was asleep and recently received requests. You may experience API downtime for approximately one minute and up to five minutes. |
| **Sleeping, will delete soon** | Your cloud router has been asleep for almost 30 days and will be deleted soon.                                                                    |
| **Deleted**                    | Your cloud router has been deleted but the associated graph variant remains. You can recreate a cloud router at anytime. [Learn more.](#deleted)  |

### Sleeping

Serverless cloud routers go to sleep if they haven't received requests for seven days. While sleeping, your cloud router can't serve requests.

Sleeping cloud routers automatically wake up once they receive requests. While waking, your cloud router can't process incoming requests. It typically takes about one minute to wake up.

### Deleted

If a cloud router has been sleeping for 30 days, Apollo automatically deletes it.
Router deletion doesn't delete the associated graph variant from GraphOS Studio, but it does spin down the infrastructure powering your cloud router.

You can access a deleted router's [config](/graphos/reference/router/configuration) and its variant's schema, but you can't recover any [secrets that were stored in GraphOS Studio](/graphos/routing/cloud/configuration#managing-secrets). The variant's metrics are only kept for a day after deletion per the [Serverless data retention policy](https://www.apollographql.com/pricing#data-retention).
